Lately, almost all of the teleseminars, webinars, and live speaking engagements I’ve done have been paid events.   That means my audience has to pay to attend, and I get paid to present. 

That’s great for me, but NOT so great for people who can’t afford to pay for access to some of the cutting edge internet marketing strategies I share with my audiences.  

Recently, fellow Teleseminar Secrets alum Tim Fahndrich approached me with a request to speak at his Summer Success Summit. 

I agreed for three reasons:

#1  He said registration would be free for my attendees
#2  It allowed me to put on a teleseminar without having to do all the “back office” work
#3  Tim and I both have weird last names which start with “Fahn”
(Hey, people make commitments for much stranger reasons than this!)

Starting in just a couple of weeks, the Summer Success Series will be kicking off to help you grow your business while your competition is on holiday…

This is a teleseminar event featuring ten different speakers, and promises to deliver some very unique and interesting content which will reinvigorate your business. 

Best of all, this series is FREE!

Second best of all, there will be NO SELLING allowed by  the speakers on these Teleseminars. 

Just pure, valuable content!

>>> More Info<<<

The Summer Success Series features TEN speakers over four weeks, topics to be covered include:

• Building a massive email marketing list from scratch
• How to profit from Social Networking  (Featuring yours truly!)
• Removing the barriers in YOUR belief so you CAN take your business to the next level
• Niche, Niche, Niche!
• Creating passive income through membership / subscription business models
• Go For No!  Creating the ultimate system for failing your way to success
• All systems go - leveraging the power of systems in your business
• Dispelling the myths of Network Marketing and how you can create the life of your dreams
• Creating multiple streams of income with affiliate marketing
• Look ma - no hands!  Automating and leveraging your business using web-based tools and strategies
• Living Life according to God’s Financial Principles

 

The Summer Success Series begins Tuesday, July 29th, so register today for your free access by clicking here:

>>> http://ccu.summersuccesssummit.com <<<

I’ll be on the line and ready to learn…will you?

 

"Be Unreasonable" by Paul Lemberg

For a book named “Be Unreasonable: The unconventional way to extraordinary business results”, I had really high expectations.

I’ve long been known for doing things a bit different.  Unique.  Even unreasonable.  I’m proud of that fact. 

So when I saw the title of this book, I was pretty excited to read it.  But I wasn’t super-impressed when I finished.

They say you should never judge a book by it’s cover.  In this case, I should have.

Take a look at the picture above.  Does that cover look unreasonable to you? 

Me neither.  In fact, it’s pretty plain.  Which is also how I found the contents of Be Unreasonable.

Yes, the author makes some important points about not following conventional wisdom, not doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results, etc.   But for a book with a title as promising as this was, I found it to be quite “reasonable” indeed.

Bottom line:  It’s an ok read, and probably worth your time to skim through it (Chapter 5&6) if you can borrow it from someone else, but I would not recommend buying it. 

If you REALLY to stimulate your thought process to being “unreasonable” or “amazing” or “WOW”, I can highly recommend any of the following:

Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin

The Project 50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Every “Task” into a Project That Matters! by Tom Peters

Re-Imagine by Tom Peters

Seth Godin posted a VERY thought-provoking message on his blog today.

The subject is “scarcity”…but I got more out of it when I mentally changed the subject to “How to be successful by treating your existing customers like royalty”

Which is what every business should be doing.

But almost NONE of them are.

Please read Seth’s post by clicking here, then share his comments to every business owner/manager you know who doesn’t reward you for being one of their best customers.  

Oh, and for you marketing folks…it’s not just about customer service, there are a few gold nugget marketing ideas in Seth’s post as well.

This week, I launched a DRTV (Direct Response TV…aka infomercial) campaign for Thomas Kinkade’s newest painting called NASCAR Thunder.

NASCAR Thunder by Thomas Kinkade

NASCAR Thunder is pure Kinkade, yet it’s also pure NASCAR, depicting the 50th running of the Daytona 500 this past February.

It’s really a brilliant painting, and I’m so proud to be a part of bringing it to market.

I created two different :60 second short form commercials, which began airing nationwide a couple of days ago.   I invite you to check them out by clicking below:

Commercial #1

 

 

Commercial #2

By the way, one of these is designed to appeal to women, and the other is designed to appeal to men.   Can you tell which is which?

Please let me know what you think about these commercials by leaving a comment on this post.

PS – If you want to purchase this print at a great price, click here:  http://www.DaytonaPrint.com

I live in a (very) small town.  It’s right next to a slightly larger small town. 

Today, I was reading their weekly (yes, weekly!) paper, perusing what’s planned for the 4th of July when I came across this gem:

“One apple pie will be named the best in town at the second annual Louisburg Freedom Fest apple pie contest July 4th.   Sponsored by Senator Pat Apple and his wife, Debbie, the apple pie contest will benefit the Friends of the Louisburg Library.”

An apple pie contest sponsored by a local politician named Apple.  Brilliant!

Any bets as to whether he get re-elected when his term is up?  I’m willing to bet he does. 

What about you? 

If you own a business, or want to build your personal brand, what kind of event could you create and sponsor which will forever brand you in a positive light in the minds of YOUR customers?

Today I was quoted by “The Salary Reporter” on PayScale.com for an article on their blog entitled “7 Tips For Boosting Your Career Through Online Social Networks”.

The seven tips they recommend are as follows:

1. Join online social networks
2. Establish goals and a strategy for online social networks
3. Think through your personal and professional identities
4. Develop and update your online profile
5. Make connections on online social networks
6. Join groups inside online social networks; ask and answer questions
7. Explore the Jobs tab on LinkedIn

Click HERE to read the full article, and to get a complete explanation the 7 tips.

If you are really serious about using Social Networks to boost your career or to market your business, CLICK HERE for my On Demand webinar “Social Networking Success”

I arrived home late last night from Salt Lake City, where I was training 200 call center reps for a new product launch I’m managing. 

The training lasted 11 hours. 

It was only supposed to last 10. 

Why the extra hour? 

Because of inconsiderate people who don’t comply with the time allocation they’ve been given for a presentation.  

Let me explain…

There were four training sessions throughout the day, with four clients presenting at each session.  Each client was given 40 minutes to train. 

ONE of the clients went over their time limit by at least 10-15 minutes at each and every session.  They had no consideration whatsoever for the timing, schedule, and logistics of the 200+ other people involved in the training process.

This delay pushed the entire training schedule off track, causing a lot of stress, anxiety and even a missed flight for another group who was there. 

Recently, my mom joined a local “professional networking” group where each person present is given one minute to deliver an “elevator speech”.

It drove her crazy, because certain people went 2, 3, or even 4 minutes over their allotted time.  She finally quit the group for a couple of reasons, but this was one of the biggest ones.  Their loss.

Bottom line:  If you are a speaker, trainer, presenter, sales person, giving a networking pitch, conducting the weekly staff meeting, or in front of an audience for ANY reason…if you’ve been given a time limit, PLEASE sit down and shut up when you hit that limit. 

The audience, the organizers, and the presenters following you will greatly appreciate it. 

PS – If you need help learning how to craft an effective presentation within a time limit, RUN, don’t walk to your nearest Toastmasters club.  I HIGHLY recommend it!

I was in the process of hiring an assistant a couple of months ago, when circumstances beyond my control delayed that from happening. 

I had even identified the person I wanted to hire, but she found another job in the meantime and is no longer available. 

Therefore, I’m back in the search for a great Administrative and/or Marketing Assistant. 

CLICK HERE to check out the full job posting

Be sure to read the comments on that post, where I was honored and humbled by an unsolicited testimonial from a former employee and current friend.

If you fit what I am looking for, please apply.

If not, please forward the job posting to someone who does.  Thanks!

Today I was being interviewed by Kristina Cowan “The Salary Reporter” for an article she is writing, when I mentioned checking out a particular website to see if it had any kind of decent traffic.

When she asked me how I found the information so fast, I told her…then realized I had better share the nifty little tool with you so that you can “spy” on websites yourself.

It’s called popuri.us…and it’s “A tool to check at-a-glance the link popularity of any site based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc) and more!” according to the website.

I love it because it very quickly allows you to check out the “traffic legitimacy” of any given website.  I often get calls and emails from people claiming to have a “high traffic website” and wanting me to buy ads or otherwise gamble on their claim of high traffic. 

One click on popuri.us can confirm or deny this claim.

The report you get back from popuri.us looks like this one, which is the actual report for the blog you are now reading:

A couple of key numbers to look at:

Google PageRank:  This is a number, on a scale of 1-10 indicating how important and relevant a website might be according to Google. 
What to look for:  Any number below 3 is pretty small.  4-5 is moderate, and above 6 is a very well trafficked website.

Alexa rank:  This is a rank of popularity against every other website in the world.  In the report above, the number didn’t show up for some reason, even though I have an Alexa rank of 724,735.  Odd.  Anyway, hopefully it will show up for you. 
What to look for:  The lower the number, the better.  Anything below 1 million is an ok website.  Below 500,000 is doing VERY good.  Over 1 million is a traffic “wannabe”.

Yahoo BackLinks:  This indicates how many other websites Yahoo has recorded with links back to the subject site. 
What to look for:  Anything less than 500 is practically invisible.   1,000 - 2,000 is moderately popular.  Over 2,000 usually means a lot of people value the content of that particular site. 

CLICK HERE to check out the stats on YOUR favorite site

Someone really nice over at Electronic Retailer blog mentioned me in their post today, and put a link to my site.    In the interest of making it easier to understand why they linked over here, I’m compiling a quick list of my “New Media” related posts to make your browsing experience more efficient.  

 

The DRTV industry still doesn’t get the internet

How to market on Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn

Social Networking / Social Media

Google SMS aka Google Text - Your mobile concierge

The end of the internet?

I’m finally Twitter-pated

 

Enjoy!